Skills Testing & FAQs

Onboarding Dilemma – The Boss!

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As bosses, we get excited when we’ve finally filled a position. We feel our job is done. It’s up to them to be successful. Sink or swim. The problem? Even the best of hires can struggle to acclimate to a new environment without the help and support of their boss. 

Onboarding is an extension of the hiring and selection process, which can help ensure a person’s success. A well designed system provides the new hire with an informal and formal approach to learn about their job responsibilities, how to navigate the company culture, and how to interact effectively with their new co-workers, management and customers. While formal programs are easy to put together, it’s the informal ones, which are often the deciding factor, that are challenging. Bosses need to provide proper mentoring (and coaching) options for success. Failure to do so usually means career derailment for both of them.

Hire the right person first time around. No system or boss can fix a person who does not fit the job. Use a hiring and selection system that includes scientifically validated assessment tools. These objective tools take the mystery out of why some people are natural fits for their job responsibilities. It calibrates true willingness to acquire interpersonal, technical, mechanical, enterprising, sales and/or the financial savvy required. These same tools indicate why a new hire may need additional training that you may – or may not – have planned on providing!

Manage the Honeymoon Period. Typically all new hires have an initial period when everything goes well. Then they hit the proverbial wall. The honeymoon’s over.  As the boss, you must coach them through the issue(s). Set them up for success by providing specific written results that are expected to be achieved within the first couple of weeks.  Outline success indicators to show they are on track. Expand intended results for their first quarter on the job, six months, and one year.  Use of a 360-degree tool can also provide additional insights.

Start this Onboarding process on day one of the job. Reiterate what you’ve already said in the hiring interview. New hires may have forgotten key information, or find that their perception wasn’t what you intended. NOW, is the time to get on the same page!

Listen and Learn.  The key to successful onboarding is for new hires to listen more than talk! It’s important they learn from different people and ask the same questions of other employees, co-workers, and management. Don’t forget to include vendors and suppliers. The new hire should not offer opinions during this process, but rather, privately offer recommendations to you at first. This will provide you both an opportunity to learn from one another. As the boss, you can help them successfully navigate the corporate structure and learn how to work with and through others to develop successful solutions and relationships within your organization.

Pay particular attention if they seem to believe they already understand how to effectively use your company systems. Just because it worked somewhere else doesn’t mean it will work the same way here. Be sure to check in daily for the first couple of weeks to ensure positive progress is being made. Then, if all is going well, extend check-in’s to once a week.

Provide a mentor or coach. This is a great way to help new people ask questions that can be held in confidence. These same questions, asked of co-workers could inadvertently sabotage the new hire’s success.  Be vigilant with   new hires who repeatedly find convenient excuses for not meeting with their mentor (or coach). Watch for problems brewing, before they become major issues. Understand new employees can sabotage themselves by not incorporating suggestions or relying upon their experiences and idealistic ideas of how things “should” work. This limited, often erroneous perspective, can get in the way of their success within your company. As their boss, schedule time to have “come down to reality” conversations. Remember, you are their key to success, or career derailment.

 

©Jeannette Seibly, 2010

Job Fit Essentials

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It’s a blessing when employees (and bosses) enjoy great-fit jobs. Because they fit, these people make significant contributions to the success of the organization. They experience very high levels of job satisfaction and loyalty. There is a synergy of ideas and working relationships that excel beyond the norm. Sales increase. Customers experience higher satisfaction working with the company.

What is the primary reason we don’t naturally find these valued employees? We rely upon traditional methods and then rationalize hiring failures as “not our fault.” We accept mistakes as part of the norm. We fail to create and follow a hiring and selection system that provides sustainable results. The fact is, a business is often better off leaving an “empty seat” rather than randomly filling the position with someone not suited to the job.

Hire the right person. We are often snookered by verbally adept candidates. We fall into this trap when someone has the ability to sell themselves, whether they possess true interest or the capability to do the job well or not. Studies show, poor job fit produces unhappy workers. Those who are unhappy in their work create miscommunication, make more mistakes, fail to focus on critical elements, and blame others for their inability to produce required results. They are overly focused on things that don’t matter rather than job performance.

Understand the Financial Impact. Hiring people who do not fit your job requirements and your company’s culture will cost you time and money. They may even irrevocably damage your reputation. The wrong person can actually increase your business and product liability.  Unfortunately, there is no line item on your financial statement about this costly process. But if you analyze the true expenses, tangible and intangible, you’ll be shocked and dismayed by these hidden costs. (Contact JLSeibly@gmail.com for the Cost Hiring Calculator)  Use this data as cost justification to build a legal, cost effective system.

Select the right tools. Develop a selection process built upon gathering reliable, valid, relevant information. This can be a challenge since we consider using scientifically designed assessments as costly, and not as important as our gut feelings. The added falsehood is that we believe we can coach, train and motivate anyone to do anything.

Select assessment tools that meet DOL guidelines, and provide information regarding how well their mental engine, their ability to drive the engine, and their interest in doing so, fit within your company, for this specific job. (SEE http://SmartHiringMadeEasy.wordpress.com)

Train the interviewers. Regrettably, poorly trained interviewers will rely upon their intuition and perceptions, and will hear what they want to hear. They don’t catch or ignore conflicting signals. They miss the fact that job candidates say all the right things, and make the right type of promises. Use a structured interview process to discern candidates’ depth of job skill. Implement qualified and scientific assessments that contain interview questions. These behaviorally based questions provide a structure to ascertain reliable job fit.

©Jeannette Seibly, 2010

Warren Buffet had it right:

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“In looking for someone to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. But the most important is integrity, because if they don’t have that, the other two qualities, intelligence and energy, are going to kill you.”

He went on to summarize his lesson: “When you hire someone to run your business, you are entrusting him or her with the piggy bank. If these people are smart and hardworking, they are going to make you a lot of money, but it they aren’t honest, they will find lots of clever ways to make all your money theirs.”

Consider these facts:

In retail: Employee theft is estimated to be responsible for 47% of store inventory shrinkage.That ‘s over 17 billion dollars per year! Employee dishonesty is the greatest single threat to profitability at the store level.

It’s not all money and goods: A recent national survey found that 59 percent of employees who quit or were laid off or terminated in the last 12 months admitted to stealing company data, and 67 percent admitted to using their former employer’s confidential information to find a new job.

Banks and Credit Unions: The banking industry reports losses of over one billion dollars annually because of employee theft, greater than the amount taken in bank robberies many times over.

Lots of ways to do it: Faking on-the-job injuries for compensation, taking merchandise, stealing small sums of cash, forging or destroying receipts, shipping and billing scams, putting fictitious employees on payroll, and falsifying expense records.

Across business types: Security experts predict that up to 30 percent of the nation’s workers will steal at some time in their career. Difficult economic times, lack of salary increases and the threats of downsizing and cutbacks make it even more tempting for employees to help themselves.

This threatens your existence!  It is not unusual for a small business to be bankrupted by one employee’s theft . The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners reports that small businesses suffered a median loss of $100,000!

You just won’t know: On average, it takes 18 months for an employer to catch an employee who is stealing.

How can you protect your business?

As devastating as these possible losses are, two simple and inexpensive processes, inserted in your hiring system, can dramatically reduce the possibility that you will experience them:

Perform background checks before you hire. While background checking is far from flawless, it’s a valuable tool to learn about past problems and possible risks–and it doesn’t cost much!

Use an honesty-integrity assessment. A valid, predictive honesty-integrity assessment will help you avoid hiring someone likely to cause you this kind of problem–again, it doesn’t cost much!

Combine these two tools to help protect yourself from mostly preventable business disasters!

To learn more about using background checking and honesty-integrity assessments in your hiring process:   Contact JLSeibly@gmail.com. We’ll show you the tools, explain the low costs and high benefits, show you real-life examples of how they work, and arrange a demonstration, if you like!

Written by John W. Howard, PhD

Sources of statistics

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